Need Advice on Neighbors Fire Pit

Your neighbor is doing you a favor. With all that smoke you are unlikely to have problems with mosquitoes.

Ugh. This sucks. Your options would seem to be:

1) Ignore - Beer and therapy likely required

2) Mitigate - Spend more time outside of your home, get air filters, get a giant fan to blow the air right back to your neighbor, etc.

3) Engage - You could do this either aggressively or politely. Aggressively could be either passive or active. Passive aggressively would be something like blaring some loud music or being similarly annoying with the hope that your neighbors reflect on their own behavior. It could also be casually dropping hints in conversations with them. Overtly aggressive would be sending notes, threatening to report them, etc. Politely engaging would work best if you have a semi-amicable relationship with your neighbor already and can swing by their house some afternoon and say, "Dude(tte), I've been wrestling with how to talk to you about this but since we're good neighbors I thought I could just talk to you directly about this. We've been getting a lot of smoke in our house from your fire pit and wondering if there's some way we can improve this without detracting from your enjoyment of it. It's a pretty sweet fire pit and has got to be a lot of fun, but man (woman), it's stinky. Again, I'm not good with discussing these things face to face, but feel we have a good relationship and wanted to be honest with you."

4) Evacuate - Worse case scenario, you could move

I think starting with #3 and the polite approach would probably make the most sense at this stage.

Blare some annoying mexican music nightly and your neighbor will hate being in his own backyard.

*not racist...i'm mexican.

You could always try to stop being a little b!tch and go talk to them instead of whining and crying here about it. Grow a pair Karen.

oldfella wrote:

I am thinking of maybe talking to the guy

slow down there champ. there's no need to resort to such drastic, radical measures just yet.

why don't you try leaving a passive aggressive note in his mailbox first...that normally does the trick

Get some industrial strength fans to blow the smoke away from your house.

Don't send an e-mail. Go knock on their door and calmly explain how their fun is harming your life.

you are supposed to call the fire department and they talk to them. Obviously I don’t want to do that.

The solution is staring you in the face. If you don't want to do it, it means you have decided to live with it.

Calling the fire department is not like calling the cops. Fire fighters are cool and helpful.

This is an incredible minor thing. Go talk to him politely face to face. Explain your issues. Be respectful of the fact he really likes the thing. Work out some solution and be mindful that it’s 100 times better for you both to sacrifice a little than to become next door antagonists who start to fret about bumping into each other for the next 20 years every time you step out the door.

All too often we seem to forget how a simple in person conversation Is worth a million words on the internet or letters to the authorities. My wife will spend hours googling and researching down the rabbit hole of some stupid issue or waste 100 texts, when 5 minutes face to face will do. The worst is how people with Minor grievances tend to these days ratchet it up from 0 to 60, going straight to a nuclear option like filing a restraining order without just talking to someone like a human being.

Set up a couple of smoke alarms on the property border. The shrieking alarms will get the message across.

pavement88 wrote:

Calling the fire department is not like calling the cops. Fire fighters are cool and helpful.

Yeah, but sometimes they go overboard. I had a guy renting a house across the street from me years ago and he was out back burning boxes and plastic in a 50 galllon barrel. Stupid and completely illegal inside city limits. I called the non-emergency fire number and asked if they could send someone to talk to him. I'm thinking a firefighter in one of their pickup trucks. She said they'd send a truck immediately. Wait, a firetruck? "Yes sir, we fight fires with fire trucks". I told her to forget and talked to the guy myself. He was a hopeless redneck and thought burning trash was the right way to get rid of it. He even brought the barrel with him. It was like he didn't consider we had a trash service or something.

0/10 - millennial blaming (yet claiming they've been neighbors for 20 years) and also including someone holding parties during a pandemic.

Choose one group to troll at a time, grasshopper

Smokey T. Bear wrote:

Set up a couple of smoke alarms on the property border. The shrieking alarms will get the message across.

I like this one.

Maybe have the exterior of your home, and possibly even the interior if it's that bad, screened for soot deposits.

I think there are labs that can do this.

Disaster response contractors look for soot to determine how much of a house to gut after a fire. My friends had a garage fire that hardly affected the house but half the house was torn out due to soot/smoke.

But, in general, you need to collect evidence. CO meter, some other documentary data.

Talking to them absent any evidence might work fine. But it might not.

A neighbour with a large yard set up a dirt bike track for his 2 teenage sons. Quiet residential area. Not sure what the response would be , but I talked to him politetly ( " Beautiful yard , I was a kid once and understand up to a point , many folks around here are concerned " ), etc. No threats , turned into a good discussion about other things. And the kids now bike less than 10 minutes 3 x a week.

Talk with them first ! They may be reasonable .

FirepitObserver wrote:

Blare some annoying mexican music nightly and your neighbor will hate being in his own backyard.

*not racist...i'm mexican.

This really made me laugh. Go all in,

Yeah I have sympathy other this stupid I don't know what the fu.ck a millennials is blame.

How many millennials are buying homes with pools and firepits? the only people in my neighbourhood with either (or both) are the over 50 crowed.

Finally you've had this same neighbor 20 years. Did they own the house at 15? lol you should be asking for stock tips...

Since you exaggerate out of your asrse I think everything else you said is pretty dumb.

How close is the fire pit to your house? If it’s more than 30 yards or so, it shouldn’t be that bad unless he’s using crappy firewood.

Maybe buy him some nice dry firewood That will burn a lot cleaner. It would be a nice gesture to let him know the excessive smoke bothers you. Unless he’s a complete jerk he will most likely try to minimize the smoke heading your way.

A month isn't very long. Give it another couple months. If it's still constant then talk to the fire department. As someone who has had neighbor problems, talking to them probably won't make a difference. If you do communicate with them about this then record the conversation or use email/text.